The Knife of Lucretia Borgia
by ElyahGray
Summary: Donna converses with the President on a late flight.


The Knife of Lucretia of Collatia ElyahGray See the end for a note on historical accuracy.  
  
In the late days of the Roman monarchy, a woman named Lucretia was renowned for her pietas, the feminine virtue that is loosely equitable with the modern piety. The Romans, for all their virtues (and like piety, the Romans gave us virtus), did not take a very enlightened view of the roles of women: while the men were at war, the women were supposed to attend their weaving, piously waiting for their husbands to return. Lucretia's husband, Collatinus, was, at this point, away at a siege. The siege being dull, the Tarquinii fell to drinking, and Collatinus made a boast of the extraordinary pietas of his wife. Sextus Tarquinius, the prince demanded proof of this, so the Tarquinii abandoned their siege and returned to spy upon their wives.  
Predictably, all the wives but Lucretia were flirting and drinking. Lucretia herself was at home, spinning interminably (and forcing her poor maidservants to do the same, while all the other maids got all the wine they could drink). When Sextus Tarquinius saw this he was consumed with lust. He contrived to send Collatinus and the rest of the Tarquinii back to the battlefield, and sneaked into Lucretia's bedroom late at night. He threatened to kill her unless she had sex with him; she refused. He threatened to kill his servant and claim that he did it because he discovered that the servant was having an affair with Lucretia, which would shame her family. Lucretia acquiesced.  
Ashamed of her perceived sin, Lucretia sent for her father and her husband, and asked them both to bring a friend with them. Her husband happened to meet Lucius Junius Brutus on his journey home; Brutus agreed to accompany Collatinus. When they arrived, Lucretia recounted the story, and, though they protested that she had been raped and was without sin, Lucretia forced them to swear to avenge her, then threw herself on a knife she'd hidden in her skirts.  
She became the icon of the Roman revolution. Brutus, called the Liberator, took up the charge and slaughtered Taquinius' family, and would have killed him, too, but he fled, leaving his children to die. Livy's version of The Rape of Lucretia is ranked with the Aeneid in terms of seminal Roman literature.  
Roughly two thousand years later, another Lucretia lived in Italy. Lucretia Borgia was born in 1480 to Rodrigo Borgia (who would later become Pope Alexander VI, better known as the Borgia Pope) and one of his mistresses. She was betrothed 5 times and married thrice, her first marriage (and third betrothal) took place at the age of thirteen. Even during her life she was the subject of mockery; when the Borgia Pope issued a papal bull declaring her virginity so that she could marry the third time, the Vatican was said to ring with laughter. Rumors even less flattering circulated about her: that she murdered her husbands, and that was engaged in sexual liaisons with both her father and her brother. Her whoredom is notorious even today, with half a dozen films and a dozen volumes dedicated to reveling in her sins.  
That isn't exactly true, though. Less well known is her role as pawn of her father and brother. Caesar Borgia is credited with strangling Lucretia's second husband (who she is believed to have genuinely loved) as he lay convalescing, while Lucretia and one of her maidservants fought with the captain of his guard. Even less well known than that is Lucretia's contribution to the musical Italian and Spanish Renaissances: she and her rival, Isabella d'Este, are credited with bringing frottlas to the height of their popularity (but then, considering the modern popularity of the frottla, that revelation may be damning her with faint praise).  
The reason that the two Lucretias are relevant to me right now is because of a conversation I had this evening with the President. Josh was locked into one of the conference rooms on Air Force One, doing a job for Leo, and I was, for once, left without work. I was seriously considering sleep when Leo strode purposefully over to me.  
"Donna, would you mind doing me a favor?" he asked.  
"Sure, Leo, what can I do?"  
He lowered his tone confidentially. "The President's tired and a little cranky; and he's just taken his back medication. Would you mind keeping an eye one him for a couple hours, just until we land?"  
I considered declining for a wild moment; telling Leo that no, I don't have a reason, but that I was just unwilling to do him this favor. I didn't, of course; not after what Leo had done - or rather, hadn't done - about the behavior he had witnessed in Josh's office the previous week.  
("You're making me attend the state dinner on Friday!"  
"So?"  
"So I need something to wear!" I moaned, perching on the corner of Josh's desk.  
"Donna..."  
"Josh..."  
"Donnatella..." Josh whined, flopping down into his office chair and resting his crossed ankles on the desk.  
"Joshua...come on, it's just for a couple hours." I whined, standing back up and wandering around the office.)  
I tamped down the memory, trying to fight off the heat in my cheeks by focusing on the present moment. "I'd be glad to, but wouldn't you rather have Charlie, or...?"  
Leo grinned with genuine pride. "Charlie's not on this trip. He's doing a college tour with his younger sister this week."  
In return, I smiled widely. "Yeah? Where're they looking at?"  
"Good schools. Vassar, Brown, Duke, Georgetown..."  
I forced myself to smile a little wider, and reminded myself that Leo would be the last to resort to tactics of intellectual belittlement. I wasn't even sure he knew that I hadn't completed school. "That's great!"  
"The President's going to write her a letter."  
"That's really great," I said, hating myself for not being able to come up with anything more clever.  
"Anyway, do you mind...? All you need to do is just make sure he doesn't wander back into the press area."  
"Oh, no, not at all. I'd be glad to."  
Leo directed me to the President's stateroom. I was at a loss for why I was so hesitant to babysit the President. Putting aside the fact that he's probably one of the most intimidating people since Socrates, I genuinely enjoy his company. He has something interesting (well, at least kind of interesting) to say on nearly every topic I can think of, and his ability to put someone at ease is unparalleled. It probably had something to do with my suspicion that Leo told him about - the thing.  
(Josh stood up, presumably to stop my pacing. "What if I need you?" This was my cue that he was weakening.  
"This," I said, taking a step closer to him, "is a copy of your schedule tomorrow. You'll notice there's a three-hour block for lunch."  
He stepped closer to me, taking the paper from my hand without looking at it. "If I say yes," he started, apparently unaware of how close he was to me, "what will you do for me?"  
Something snarky about not being willing to work on Sunday crossed my mind, but in light of how good he looked in the pale sunlight I simply rasped "What did you have in mind?" in a much lower tone than I had intended. Before I could mentally berate myself for the cliche, Josh reached out to my cheek with a gentle hand. He stroked his thumb across my cheekbone before sliding his hand across my jaw, and I shivered when he applied gentle pressure to the back of my neck, forcing my chin up. He leaned down, and Leo cleared his throat from the doorway, just as I registered that the vague thumping I had just heard was a knock on the door. Josh leaped backward, and I couldn't help but feel just a little insulted.  
"Sorry...Donna wasn't at her desk," Leo said, pretending not to have seen what he just saw.)  
I knocked on the door twice, and waited for the "come in" before entering. The President was sprawled on a couch, staring vapidly at a muted television set. He looked disheveled, with his hair mussed, and jacket and tie long gone. "Good evening, Mr. President," I announced myself.  
He started a little and swung his feet off the couch. "Hey, Donna."  
"Who's winning, sir?"  
He smiled a little, out the side of his mouth. "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure," he said. "Did Leo send you to babysit me?"His words were a little slurred, through from exhaustion or Vicodin I couldn't tell.  
"Not babysit, sir, so much as make sure that none of your brilliance went unheard."  
"Nice save."  
"Thank you, Mr. President."  
"I was just thinking about Lucretia." He gestured for me to sit in one of the plush armchairs by the television, which I did.  
"Which one?"  
"Borgia. I assume you know the story?"  
"I'm not an expert, or anything, but I've heard it before." Actually, that's not entirely true. I haven't been reading records in the original Italian, or anything, but in one of my music classes I wrote a term paper on the frottla; there was no way to avoid at least a mention of Lucretia.  
"You know, she took over as Pope for a while."  
"No, I've never heard that before." Although, now that I think about it, it does ring some bells.  
"Not exactly as Pope. She took over the secular duties for a while, and is probably the only woman ever to do so."  
"It's kind of odd that it's not better known. You'd think it'd be at least a footnote in the scandal that was her life."  
"It wasn't really a proud moment for the Catholic Church," he commented.  
"Well," I snorted, "they didn't do too much right until the Catholic Reformation." The President looks incredulously at me for a moment, and I realize to whom I've said this thing a moment too late to backpedal. "Not that...I mean, I didn't mean -"  
"It's all right," he interrupts. "You've got a point there, whether I want to admit it or not."  
"I really am sorry, sir," I tell him, and he waves off my apology.  
"I was just reading an article about the other Lucretia today, Lucretia of Collatia," he said.  
"What did it say, Mr. President?"  
"It was an interesting piece of revisionist history, without really any evidence. Not that there's so much evidence of Lucretia's existence, anyway. It suggested that maybe Lucretia didn't provide her own knife; that maybe her intent was just to demand that her husband exact vengeance, and Brutus the Liberator suggested that the only way for her to rectify the shame on her family was for her to kill herself."  
"That's very interesting, sir. I've never heard of that before."  
He nodded, looking exhausted. "Hey, you don't mind if I sleep for a while, do you?"  
"Oh, of course not, sir," I said, jumping to my feet. "I'll just be outside; call for me if you need anything?"  
He nodded again. "Thank you, Mr. President," I said quietly, and closed the door behind me. An uncomfortable, armless bench sits outside the door, and I half-collapsed into it. As I stare at the stars out the window, it suddenly occurs to me that I've never heard the President slur his words before.  
It's probably nothing. It's probably nothing.  
Why didn't Leo reprimand Josh or me for the thing in Josh's office?  
Probably because he knew that kind of action would just set Josh off on a Sam-esque tangent. One word from Leo, and we're back to "It's not about looking good, it's about being good.  
And beyond that, why would Leo want me to watch the President if he was just about to go to sleep?  
So that I could hear his little parable of the Lucretias. Leo told him what he saw, and he knew that I'm eminently more manipulable than Josh is.  
He's being Brutus, right now, he's handing me my sword. Because if I'm not willing to be Lucretia of Collatia, I'm going to end up as Lucretia Borgia. That's what this is. I have to not see Josh, for the good of the Republic. Because - and, oh, there's no mistaking this point - the moment anyone gets a hint of scandal from his office, they're going to forget how efficiantly I ran his office, how Platonically I tended him after the shooting  
- they're going to forget that I ruled the Vatican, that I loved my second husband, that I fought Caesar for his life -  
the instant someone says "Josh Lyman's banging his college-dropout, blonde assistant."  
There's something fundamentally wrong about this. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's iconic of a higher moral fallibility, that 500 years after the daughter of the Borgia Pope and two and a half millennia after the wife of Collatinus, it's still a choice between pietas and harakiri.  
I stand up again, and turn to knock on the door again. "Come in," the President says, no trace of sleep in his voice.  
"I'm sorry to disturb you again, Mr. President."  
"That's no problem, Donnatella." His nearly whispered use of my full name is discordant, jarring, and suddenly I want to cry, or scream, or shout obscenities.  
"I just wanted to know if a request for transfer will be sufficient, or if you would like my resignation?"  
I half expected him to at least pretend to be surprised, to make a token attempt to talk me out of it, but he just sighs, and looks at his hands."I'm sorry."  
"I'll give it to Debbie tomorrow morning; I'll leave Josh a list of competent replacements."  
"I'm truly sorry, Donna."  
"Yeah, well." I grope around for the most hurtful thing I can think of at the moment. "I serve at the pleasure of the president," I say, scathingly. He looks up at me at last, and he looks old, so painfully old. I'm stricken by the fact that I never thought he'd look so old, so I soften the blow with "Thank you, Mr. President," as gently as I can say it, before backing out of the room. I try my best to savor my last trip on Air Force One, but all I can muster is a little bitterness and a rising feeling of panic. I sink mechanically back into my seat and try frantically to hold back tears. CJ keeps shooting me concerned looks, and I know I'm very pale.  
I'm startled out of my paralyzed hysteria by a hand on my shoulder. "Donna," says Leo, looking very grandfatherly, "can I talk to you for a moment?"  
I nod silently, and follow him to a conference room. "I'm sorry that this had to happen like it did..."  
"There's no need to patronize me, Leo. If this is just a lip service apology -" Leo slides a manila folder across the table to me. "What's this?" I ask, sliding the leaves of paper out. They're letters, addressed to me C/O Leo McGarry.  
"One of the Bartlet charities is to sponsor an adult woman at the college of her choosing," Leo says. The letters are acceptance letters, and I leaf through them frantically - Yale, Brown, Princeton, University of Chicago, Berkeley, Stanford. "Dr. Bartlet wrote you a letter of recommendation, as did a high school teacher of yours; your grades and SATs were good enough that the only string we pulled was getting them to accept the applications in the off season, and without an essay." Georgetown is conspicuous in its absence, which, of course, isn't accidental.  
"I...thought we were talking rape, not prostitution," I stammer out at last, and suddenly I can't hold in the tears anymore. I bury my face in the crook of my arm, and sob for a long time. Eventually Leo stands up, pats me awkwardly on the shoulder, and leaves the room.  
  
A note on historical accuracy: As far as I know, everything concerning Lucretia of Collatia is correct, except for the statement of revisionist history. There have been, to the best of my knowledge, no reports that Brutus supplied Lucretia's knife. I have studied no Latin, and read an unannotated version of Livy's story, so there are probably some errors in names, Latin words, and pluralizations. A list of sources regarding Lucretia Borgia is available upon request. If you wish to argue with me about the Catholic Church in the medieval period (and, if you disagree with me, please do!), please first consider reading William Manchester's excellent A World Lit Only By Fire. Thank you for reading, and if you made it this far, I salute you. 


End file.
